Availability of up-to-date information is more important today than ever before and this will continue to be true for the foreseeable future. People want to be well informed, so much so that they travel with cellular phones, beepers, and even portable hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite receivers.
GPS capable devices generally have a GPS receiver for receiving satellite signals from the GPS satellite network that allow for determination of the device's position. Such devices allow for precisely locating the device in terms of latitude and longitude using the GPS receiver. Some devices have map data stored in memory and a display for showing the device position with reference to the map data. Other devices have no underlying map data base for reference. Rather, they show only the geographic coordinates of the device's location. These coordinates may be referred to as waypoints. Most GPS receiver devices can store many waypoints. Some GPS receiver devices can plot and display a trail of waypoints and store this trail for future retrieval. Sophisticated devices may compute the device's heading, speed, and other information based on comparisons with previous GPS determined positions.
GPS receiver devices with map display capability may store the map information on computer diskettes, CD-ROM's, or other computer memory storage devices. The device location may then be displayed on a display terminal with reference to a map stored in the computer memory storage device. The available quantity of map data, however, can overwhelm the memory capability of easily portable computer devices. This problem is exacerbated when additional information is included and linked with the map data. In addition, information is more valuable when it is up to date and available at the time of consumption, and such devices do not incorporate a means for updating the stored information. By way of example, a CD ROM could never maintain an up-to-date list of every 5-star restaurant.
Some GPS receiver devices have the ability to communicate over a telecommunications network. These devices do not provide for automatic or semi-automatic dynamic exchange of on-line position dependent or related information. In addition, these devices cannot communicate with third parties in the absence of a uniform data format standard. For example, a cellular-phone-based system comprising GPS location information working in conjunction with proprietary Public Safety Answering Point (ASAP) telephone equipment is known. The device provides personal and medical information on an emergency basis to the proper authorities. Such a device does not allow third parties to communicate, tag, interrogate, limit, designate, modify or share this information amongst themselves for any other use.
To that end, the ability to receive digital data structures with GPS encoding, and storing this information for eventual use or broadcast to third parties, would be valuable. Today, the U.S. and several other countries have independent publishers busily GPS mapping everything down to the most minute detail. Most of these data bases are available on CD ROM storage. The problem is that no one data base can contain enough information to fulfill the unique requests of every particular and picky consumer. The costs associated with providing and maintaining such a large data base would be overwhelming and over-burdening. Additionally, most consumers do not like reading or compiling vast data bases.